Mad World
by JennyLD
Summary: After Doomsday Rose tries to find her way in a world that isn't her own. Unfortunately, even the strongest of souls can cave under the pressure of a broken heart.


**Disclaimer:** Doctor Who owns my soul, I own nothing.**  
Spoilers: **Doomsday  
**Prompt: **_And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had _– Gary Jules, Mad World  
**Thanks To: **Amberfocus and Rachelbeann for the beta**  
Author's Notes: **This story kind of wrote itself one day after I spent far too much time listening to Gary Jules' version of Mad World. This is not the way I see the Rose Tyler we know from the show dealing with the aftermath of losing the Doctor. It is however, a very realistic version of the way things might have gone for her if she lived in the real world. I originally intended for there to be two different versions; one with a happy ending and one with a sad ending. I've now come to terms with which one I prefer and will only be doing the one version. This is the first part. The second will be up once I finish writing it.

* * *

The water comes down in torrents, not a cleansing shower, but a suffocating, drowning downpour that leaves the drains backed up and turns the streets into rivers. Lightning splits the sky every few minutes, followed closely by a low, deep rumble of thunder, as the wind whips the trees into a frenzy almost snapping them in two.

The streets are empty, parks deserted, shops closed up long before the time proclaimed on the signs posted in windows, now fogged over with humidity. It's been hours since anyone has been out braving the elements, hours since the sun was first swallowed by the dark, menacing clouds of the storm predicted to be London's worst in years.

Mums and dads, sisters and brothers, best mates and coworkers all have gone home, all are safe within the confines of four solid walls and a roof over their heads. Any errands ran long before the change in atmospheric conditions hit, no one, not a single soul, having the desire to get stuck in the cold, pin-prick drops of rain. No one wants to be reminded either of the certain aftermath of this dark and stormy night and doors are shut tight against the elements, curtains drawn and pinned, obscuring the terrifying sight without.

As such, there are no witnesses to this, her final, silent passage through familiar streets.

She walks slowly in-and-out through the glow of the streetlights, head down, hands buried deep within the pockets of her jacket. She's cold and she's wet, shivering, not from the dampness of her clothing, but from the storm raging inside her and yet she's completely oblivious to the one enveloping her in its embrace.

It's late, far later then her typical journey home past happy, content little lives that she herself will never know or understand. She never really believed in fantastic after all and gave up on quietly acceptable years ago--years of living the lies that she plasters on her face like makeup every morning, years of the illusions that she projects with carefully planned words that spill from her lips.

She has been the actor, this world her stage. But not anymore.

With shaking hands and trembling fingers she removes the cold, inflexible bit of metal from her pocket. Trying not to think about the once warm but now icy key that hangs lifeless on a chain between her breasts, she clicks the lock open and enters the silent flat. Just three more hours, she thinks to herself as she shuts the door behind her, three short hours and it'll all be over with one way or another.

This day has been a long time coming. Not that five and half years is really all that long in the grand scheme of things, but for Rose Tyler, former shop girl, it's been long enough.

With a sigh she hangs her house key on the hook by the door, removes her sopping trainers and places them with her jacket neatly in the enclosed porch. She's so tired of this, of going through the motions and pretending to be someone she's not. A window, that's the story Pete came up with for her, a widow who lost her love but found her place again and is happy, content just to be. She's not any of that though. Her love is not dead, just taken from her in a cruel twist of fate and a mocking of the beast's words that still haunt her dreams.

And she most certainly is not content, never will be, not here.

Keeping the lights off, she moves through the living room, peeling soaked clothing off skin that is beginning to chafe, making her way to the kitchen. By the time she's crossed the overly clean, nearly empty flat, her naked body is shaking and covered in goose flesh, but she hardly notices.

It's nothing like a home, her flat. It doesn't smell like it, doesn't look like it. She's made absolutely no attempt to put her own personal touch on this place she considers a mere transitional stop on the road to other things. It's a place to lay her head at night, to store the few belongings that are of absolute necessity and occasionally, a place to eat her evening meal.

No, her flat is nothing like a home, and that's just the way she likes it.

She spends so little time here, so little time anywhere really; wanderlust bred in her by two years spent traveling the stars. Of course she's grounded to Earth now, having to content herself with airlines and hotel rooms and scenery that isn't quit as alluring as it would've been on another planet or in another time. Some destinations she's visited however were more beautiful than others, she remembers as she dumps her clothes into the washing machine, but only because they reminded her of places she'd been to with him, only because they allowed her a brief few moments of the fantasy that she had never left his side. Never lost him to another universe.

Focusing on pouring in the precisely measured cup of detergent and setting the machine on the darks cycle brings her a small respite from the aching pain she knows now more intimately than a lover's touch. As does the cold, clinical steps she takes to mop up the wet, muddy mess from the floor, evidence of her recent trek outside. She's become a bit obsessed with cleanliness of late, an emotional compensation for the lack of control she has over her own life, or so that's what the shrink they forced her to see says.

He's not a bad man, not really, but she won't miss him and his annoyingly fake pretense of concern for her. Oh, she doesn't doubt that he wants to see her healed, to see her happy, but he doesn't really know her, doesn't know what she's been through and how much, how horribly it hurts just to breathe. He could never understand what she's going through, no one can and that makes the loneliness even worse.

She thinks that maybe she understands now the unspeakable torment always visible in the Doctor's eyes.

As she climbs the stairs to her room she lets her eyes sweep over the place she's almost called home these last few years. "_It's not that horrible of a life is it? Being here with us?" _her mums words haunt her, echoing through the room like a conscious trying to slap her into reality. But the truth of the matter is it has been.

It's not like she hasn't tried though, tried so hard to do what everyone told her to do, what everyone said would be best for her. One on one therapy and group sessions, burying herself in her job and taking time off to focus on herself, memorials and remembering, letting go ceremonies and forgetting...none of it worked.

The pill bottles scattered across her bedside table are a painful reminder of what came next. She resisted them at first, not wanting to ingest the foreign chemicals whose affects could so easily go awry. But there were threats, threats of telling her mum, psych wards and competency hearings, and she couldn't do it, couldn't risk them taking away her freedom, and with it all her best laid plans.

So she took the drugs, anti-depressants first to stabilize her moods, happy pills Mickey called them. But they didn't make her happy, they only made it even more difficult for her to sleep. Next came the tranquilizers to combat the affects of the anti-depressants and those did work, worked so well in fact that she almost couldn't drag herself out of bed in the morning. She had to begin self-medicating herself with caffeine in order to make it through the day, a large enough dose--overdose probably--that she'd shake so hard and for so long that she could barely function anyway.

Eventually, she stopped taking the pills altogether and added another lie to the growing list of mistruths she spouted on a daily basis.

With a bitter chuckle she pulls a nightshirt over her head, it's not like any of it, anything she's done in the time she's been held hostage in this universe matters now. Though it is not, any of it, the fault of the people here, or even the universe itself, she knows no guilt for the cruelty she may have inflected on them.

She knows, somewhere deep down in her soul, that this is not the Rose Tyler who once felt the pain of those who knew of nothing but war and death and destruction. Even those who threatened the lives and the sanity of those she loved found themselves on the receiving end of her limitless empathy and concern.

She just can't find it in herself to care anymore.

Climbing into bed and slipping under the covers, she settles in to wait, and maybe it's because she's slept so little of late, or maybe it's because she knows the end is so near, whatever the reason, the instant her head hits the pillow Rose falls into a deep sleep. She isn't even aware of the shift in consciousness, the switch from the waking world to that of nightmare landscapes and monsters she cannot escape.

OOO

There's no obvious marking of the passage of time when she wakes a short while later feeling strangely well rested and calmer then she has been in years. Her room is still plunged in darkness and the ravenous storm still rages checked outside. Body clenched in the fetal position, she glances at her alarm clock and realizes with a start that she's missed the deadline by a whole hour...not like it matters anyway.

He's not here, he didn't come back for her; that much is obvious.

His five and a half years are up. She waited, patiently, like a good little companion, like she was told to do all those years ago. Ok, maybe it wasn't five and years she was always supposed to wait but five and a half hours hardly seemed fair when he was faced with such insurmountable odds. Regardless, the deadline has come and gone, the goal she made for herself has been reached and she no longer owes anyone anymore time than she's already given.

Letting her eyelids flutter shut, she breathes out a sigh born of the kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot cure, and drags her weary body around to face the other side of the bed. Now that the time has come, now that she's so close to the peace she's longed for so long, she finds herself strangely hesitant, as though something is trying to stay her hand.

A shiver runs, unbidden, down her spine.

The thought of continuing on like this, day after day, with no relief in sight, no hope left in her heart, is reason enough to push aside her sudden, unexpected doubts. Taking a deep breath to steady herself and calm the strange butterfly-like nerves that crept into her gut unannounced, she opens her eyes and reaches out with a trembling hand for the bottles calling to her on her bedside table...


End file.
